Jean-Baptiste Gaultier de La Vérendrye
| Jean-Baptiste Gaultier de La Vérendrye | |
|---|---|
| La Verendrye | |
| Born | 1713-09-03 Île Dupas, New France |
| Died | 1736-06-06 Lake of the Woods |
| Occupation | Explorer; officer; fur trader |
| Father | |
| Mother | |
Jean-Baptiste Gaultier de La Vérendrye (3 September 1713 – 6 June 1736) was the eldest son of Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye. He was in his father's 1731 expedition that reached Grand Portage on 26 August, and after a mutiny there he went on to help build Fort Saint-Pierre on Rainy Lake. In June 1736 he was killed on the Lake of the Woods while leading a party sent for supplies that had been left at Grand Portage, on a trip his father described as bound for Kaministiquia and Michilimackinac.[1][2]
Life
He was born on 3 September 1713 on Île Dupas and baptized two days later. In 1731 he helped form one of the trading partnerships that financed the western expedition, and he hired men for the journey. The party left Montreal on 8 June 1731, joined Charles-Michel Mésaiger at Michilimackinac, and reached Grand Portage on 26 August. When many engagés would go no farther, La Vérendrye sent Jean-Baptiste and his cousin Christophe Dufrost de La Jemerais on with a smaller group. They built Fort Saint-Pierre that autumn and wintered there; La Vérendrye himself wintered at Kaministiquia with the main force.[1][2]
Jean-Baptiste later helped build Fort Saint-Charles, and in 1734 he built the first Fort Maurepas on the Red River. His father called him his "third in command" after the 1731 mutiny at Grand Portage, and "second in command" after La Jemerais's death in May 1736. He had learned the Monsoni language and served as an interpreter.[1]
In the winter of 1735–36 the merchants' goods, needed at the western posts, had not arrived in time and had remained at Grand Portage. On 5 June 1736 Jean-Baptiste and about twenty other Frenchmen, including the Jesuit Jean-Pierre Aulneau, left Fort Saint-Charles to fetch the provisions and merchandise. The next morning, on a small island in the Lake of the Woods, they were all killed. His father did not allow allied Cree, Monsoni, and Assiniboine parties to take revenge. The bodies of Jean-Baptiste and Father Aulneau, and the heads of the other men, were later buried in the chapel at Fort Saint-Charles.[1][2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Antoine Champagne, "Gaultier de La Vérendrye, Jean-Baptiste," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 2 (University of Toronto/Université Laval, 1969; rev. 2025).
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Yves F. Zoltvany, "Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye, Pierre," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3 (University of Toronto/Université Laval, 1974; rev. 2023).